Luck!, the musical comedy by composer Brad Ross and lyricist-librettist Mark Waldrop, will get its first staging in fall 2003 by the respected University of Michigan musical theatre department, a program known for nurturing future stars and new scripts.

Department chair Brent Wagner told Playbill On-Line the undergraduate staging of the fairy-tale-flavored musical, based on a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, will play the Trueblood Theatre on the U-M campus in Ann Arbor for one weekend, Dec. 4-7. Wagner directs a cast of 23. Music director is Kevin Bylsma.

Wagner characterized the production as a fully-staged workshop of the show with sets, lighting and costumes, open to the public. Ross (Off-Broadway's Little by Little) attended a past U-M senior showcase and kept in touch with Wagner, sending him the script and score of Luck!

"I was just delighted by what I read and heard," Wagner said. "We have in our season a small workshop production — we try to do a new work, or an experimental work or an unusual work — and this seems like a good piece for that slot in our schedule."

Among the shows previously produced in the slot were a reworked version of William Bolcom's Casino Paradise, plus Maury Yeston's Nine, Stephen Sondheim's Assassins and Merrily We Roll Along.

"This will be a good step in the history of Luck!, letting the writers see it on its feet," Wagner said. The show has been heard in regional readings, but never in a complete "off book" staging. The popular U-M musical theatre program has, in the past, produced lesser-known or untested works, including the Sheldon Harnick projects, A Wonderful Life and Dragons, in the 1980s. New work is vital to the program, Wagner said, because student needs to bite into works that are not part of the pop culture fabric.

"In schools, you don't often have the opportunity to do brand new shows," Wagner said. "And yet when I talk to our graduates, and they're doing workshops and readings all the time. It's so important to have a chance to create something that has no cast album, no blackmarket video, no movie. That surely should be a mandate for training programs."

Wagner said his students (the program numbers more than 80) will face careers that include revivals and new work.

"Part of the mission is to have the kids know the heritage of the field, to study Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin, and to be aware of what it's like to work on new projects, too," Wagner explained. "They need to learn the ability to assimilate material quickly."

Wagner came to U-M in fall 1984 to start the program, which had only 15 students at the time. It is now viewed as the most high-profile and popular producing venture in the School of Music, the umbrella school over the theatre progam at U-M.

Among productions that got the department noticed was the first-ever revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Kurt Weill's Love Life, a precursor to concept musicals. A Wonderful Life, with music by Joe Raposo and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, premiered at U-M, and Harnick's Dragons was revised and produced there, with Harnick (the masterful lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof and She Loves Me) interacting with the students for both productions.

Among shows produced on the mainstage are a mix of recent and classic titles: Parade, Side Show, The Music Man, Cabaret, West Side Story and 42nd Street, sometimes with original company members overseeing elements of the show.

Andrew Lippa (Off-Broadway's The Wild Party and Broadway's You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown), who studied in the U-M School of Music, often crossed over and involved himself in the musical theatre department.

Previously called Mazel & Shlimazel, the musical comedy draws on the story, "The Milk of a Lioness," and is a kind of fairy tale in which the spirits of good luck and bad luck wager that each will triumph in the life of "a woebegone young man, bereft of hope and down on his luck," composer Ross previously told Playbill On-Line. Director Wagner said the show delights in the storytelling process, in the same way Once On This Island does, and that attracted him to the show.

Ross, whose Little by Little was presented in 1998-99 by the York Theatre Company (and subsequently recorded), told Playbill On-Line that the short story sang to him when he first read it. "This thing captivated me from the get-go," he said. He brought the idea to Waldrop.

"It's a children's story," said Waldrop. "I thought it had really interesting characters, or the seeds of interesting characters, and I thought it was a world that was a little different than any other."

Is it a fairy tale?

"It's a folk-tale world, which is a little cruder, a little rougher," said Waldrop. "It's about luck — Good Luck and Bad Luck, and they are personified in the story as charming, humorous characters. They make a bet with each other to prove who is more powerful."

Ross said, "The lesson is ultimately about making your own luck." He added that the Bad Luck character, Shlimazel, has some "awfully entertaining numbers."

A princess, a castle and rising fortunes are part of the script, meant for seven principals and an ensemble.

Waldrop directed Bette Midler's 1999-2000 concert show and will stage the world premiere of Adventures in Love at the Ordway in Minneapolis.

The folky Isaac Bashevis Singer story had previously intrigued Sheldon Harnick and Burton Lane, who once held the stage musical rights to the story.

"Some of Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories are very Jewish," Waldrop noted. "This is not so specifically Jewish, it's more 'folk tale.' We're trying to honor Singer, but keep it very universal."

How do you get a full-length show out of a lean short story?

"In some musical adaptations, the challenge is that you have to reduce a complex novel down to a length that can be musicalized," said Waldrop. "With this, it's the opposite: We're taking a slim little story and we're adding secondary characters and subplots and enough new material to round it out to a full evening of theatre."